Natalia Malara,
,
University of Catanzaro

Natalia Malara took her specialization in Medical Oncology at the University ” Sacred Cordis”, Rome. In 1999 she started a PhD project in Human Cellular Biology, University of Messina. In 2005, she became assistant professor. In 2006, she won a FIRC (Federation Italian of Research Cancer) fellowship at the University of Catanzaro. During this period she developed new protocols (patented) for human cell culture from tissue specimens and from peripheral blood of cancer patients. Since 2009, she is one of the responsible of the nanotechnology lab (BioNEM) at the University of Catanzaro where she works in the field of nanomedicine.

CTCs isolation and their propagation in cell culture exploit the proliferative advantage of cancer cells respect to healthy hematological cells that do not survive long in vitro. CTCs became viable to phenotypic and proliferating characterization.